Page 91 of Out for Blood
I workedat a window table while Cassie closed the shop. She’d given Drew the afternoon off, which was why we’d come into town after the incident at the Carlton airport.
Now Cassie bustled around the shop, cleaning the machines and restocking supplies while I tried to track the tail number of Baltic Meridian’s Gulfstream. Hawk was in the back room, talking to Bram of all people, while Vigo wandered behind the counter, inspecting all the machinery in between shoving Oreos into his mouth.
Cassie had started keeping them at the shop for him, which was absurd in my opinion, like keeping a mischievous toddler’s favorite snack on hand in the hopes it would keep him out of trouble.
The scent of coffee hung in the air, an undercurrent of warm milk and vanilla that I’d started associating with Cassie’s bare skin. It was quiet, a cocoon of comfort, the streets of Blackwell Falls almost empty now that the autumn rush had ended.
I liked the town best when the tourists left, when the streets were empty except for the people I’d come to know.
“How’s it coming?” Cassie asked from across the room.
“Not great,” I said, leaning back to stretch. “Someone’s blocked the flight data.”
“They can do that?”
I nodded. “Most private aircraft owners do actually. I was just hoping Kaprolov hadn’t done it.”
Cassie put down the dish towel she’d been holding. “So what do we do now?”
“Not sure,” I said. “Still figuring that out.”
“Still figuring what out?” Hawk asked, returning to the room.
“Kaprolov has a privacy block on his plane,” I said. “We’ll have to find another way to figure out where it’s going next.”
Because that was the key. We knew the security team tailed Alina because of the text messages on the dead guy’s phone. Their communications were almost always about PrincessA: where she’d been, where she was going, whether or not she was “in trouble.”
And Alina would eventually be with her “papa.” The discreet pictures of her with an older man, always cropped out of the photo, age spots on his hand, a Patek Philippe Nautilus watch gleaming from his wrist.
I knew that watch, a $500,000 marvel, shockingly simple for its price tag, just a square navy face on a white gold band.
I’d never owned one myself, but I’d known a handful of men who had. It was unmistakable, and the older man in the photos with Alina always wore one.
Find the security team, find Alina, find Dimitri.
“What did my brother say?” Cassie asked.
I was surprised she’d let Hawk call Bram — surprised she hadn’t stood between them — but maybe Cassie was willing to give it some space, see if we could find our own way to some kind of peace.
“He said the police received a call from the airport about a security breach but since nothing was taken there was nothing the cops could do.”
I snorted. It always felt a little good to pull one over on the cops.
Cassie breathed a sigh of relief, and I didn’t mind saying, just watching her tits swell under her T-shirt was enough to make my dick hard. An adrenaline dump always made me horny and that had never been truer than after pulling a job — albeit a nonprofit — with Cassie.
Plus, the ring we’d given her for the ruse at the airport still winked on her finger and I had to admit it made me hot as fuck to think of Cassie as my real-life fiancée.
Or better yet, my actual wife.
She’d tried to give it back when we’d gone home to change, but we’d told her to hang on to it. I couldn’t speak for Hawk and Vigo, but on my part, it was a fuck ton of wishful thinking.
“You didn’t really think we were going to jail for that shit did you, mouse?” Vigo asked.
“I mean, you did vandalize the place,” Cassie told him.
“Bram took care of that.” Hawk looked at Vigo. “But he told me to tell you, and I quote, ‘not to get used to that shit.’”
“No problem,” Vigo said, peering under the counters. “I don’t need Bram to cover for me. I can pay a fucking vandalism fine with my pocket change.” He popped up holding a metal canister. “What’s this?”
